how to grow grape a vine

[johnnyfive]

hi,can anyone help me?
i have bought a grape vine from morrisons,dont know what to do with it,
it is in a pot,there are 3 brown stems that look dead with new shoots growing from them,
does this mean i have 3 vines or is it all 1 vine,
i intend to plant it in my greenhose but i dont know how to look after it.
can anyone help?
cheers john.

[starloc]

I got mine ( in the UK ) from morrisons, I left one for a year or so in the pot it came in, it was fine with quite a lot of bunches of mini grapes, i put some canes in the pots

last year i planted in a 100 litre plant pot and it grew to about 15 foot high, with so many grapes, it went off the canes and has now grown up the house, they twist on to anything and climb

I have never pruned it at all, and i dont plan to, im just leaving it to grow all over the house....

If its the same one i got from morrisons ( marachel foch ) the grapes are supposed to be small and they say mainly used for wine, but they are better than shop grapes to eat , the plant will grow fine outside even in freezing cold of the winter they are fully hardy and the foch gives great grapes outdoors

Its just a pitty i havent found a green grape vine in morrisons, i prefer green grapes

[BarleySugar]

If you have 3 buds these are all part of the same vine. It is best to work out a training and pruning system, otherwise you can end up with lots of growth at the expense of the grapes. There is a lot of detailed information on the Internet, the one you choose will be down to where you want to grow it and whether you are growing it mainly for grapes or whether you are growing it to cover something. However you do need to prune when it is dormant in the winter, otherwise the cuts bleed a lot of sap. This year get it planted in position and just let it grow. Tie in the shoots to give a basic structure according to your decision on how you want the mature vine to look.
I have one planted outside in a north east facing garden that I train over a 6 by 6 ft trellis to screen the greenhouse. I have 3 main rods, from which the fruiting wood sprouts each spring. These I prune back to 6 leaves past a bunch of grapes, or one leaf if it is non-flowering. I then prune back all the side shoots to one leaf. This still gives plenty of growth to cover the trellis, and I get a decent crop of seedless dessert grapes from the vine which ripen at the end of Sept. Once the vine is dormant I prune all the summer grown wood back to one bud, stick these in as cuttings , and it all starts again. My vine is not a text book shape, but it suits the dual purpose of growing for fruit and screening.

[roitelet]

If you are going to grow it in a greenhouse it is better to plant it outside and then bring the rod (Stem/branch) into the house. Beware they are thugs and unless pruned hard in winter and then the unwanted soft growth snapped of during the summer you won't be able to get inside.

[veggiechicken]

As ^^^^^ I led mine into the greenhouse from outside and trained it along the apex of the roof. It creates so much shade that the tomatoes hate it. Also, the birds fly in and eat the grapes! Yes they do ripen more quickly than the ones outside and are bigger, but I rarely have anything usable from it.

[FB.]

My experience of grapes is that they are rather like figs; they give their best results in hot, dry, sunny conditions and when planted in dry, infertile soil - rather like the Mediterranean where they are much more at home.

Round here, figs don't need special "fig pits" to keep them manageable and make them crop well, while grapes don't need much pruning as they grow at a manageable rate and crop very heavily. Both figs and grapes will grow very large root systems to supply their needs and need almost no feeding or watering once they have had a couple of seasons to establish. They appear to be very resistant to droughts (a rather topical theme at the moment!).

My Black Hamburg (and its companions; a Brown Turkey Fig and a M25 D'Arcy Spice apple) lives in some really nasty soil/builders rubble against the South-West wall of my house, and easily ripens its fruits before winter and produces far more fruit than I can use; I'm glad when I see the local kids and neighbours make off with bunches of them!